Easy On The Sauce, Cupcake, This Is Serious

Happy New Year to all our readers, amazingly there's still a few of you out there, despite the sparsity of updates in the last few months. Unsure to what sort of degree that will change in 2009, but here's a few links to get things kickstarted and see where it takes us.

853 describes Ladytron's Velocifero (our favourite album of 2008 lest ye forget) as a damb squib, but gets most other things right reporting from the frontline of south-east London.

I Am The Crime is a cool Swedish music blog run by hot Swedish music blogger Cecilia.

Robyn Wilder reveals her Top 10 embarrassing childhood crushes. Includes Dudley Moore dressed as an elf - there's hope for Dead Kenny yet then, eh Robyn?

Meanwhile, an interesting art blog - At The Moment.

West Ham's Congolese left-back Herita Ilunga also has blog (albeit in French, malheuresement).

Matt Smith has been announced as the new Dr Who. We saw Matt in That Face at the Royal Court just over 18 months ago, and he's a talented actor with a lot of energy who should do well.

The Top 20 Nude Scenes of 2008 (NOT SAFE FOR WORK) features a heavy smattering of former TV actresses like Neve Campbell, Mischa Barton and Eliza Dushku (gesundheit!).

Heather Locklear's mugshot. What would TJ Hooker say?

Worth seeking out on DVD...Alan Rudolph's surreal cartoonish romantic thriller Trouble In Mind available on R2 for the first time.

And finally...the results of the Music Bloggers Poll of Polls are in and again 7 of our Top 10 made the cut. Thanks again to Simon for compiling the chart.

Summer Night City

Richard Prince: Continuations @Serpentine Gallery, Hyde Park, London, Sunday June 29 2008, 11am.
Female Agents, Odeon Covent Garden, Sunday June 29 2008, 6.25pm.

Spent the first weekend in a while down in London, the first couple of days mainly taken with meeting up with and getting to know a certain voluptuous Brazilian online friend of mine, who, amongst other things, introduced me to the delights of pacoquinha, an intensely sweet hit of peanut taste textured somewhere between biscuit and fudge, good with tea or coffee as long as long as you have a sweet tooth!

Sunday represented an opportunity to soak up some culture, and went along to see the Richard Prince exhibition Continuations at the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park. Prince may be best known to alt.music fans for providing the striking sleeve art to Sonic Youth's Sonic Nurse, but, although there were a few of his nurse paintings included, as well as a drumhead autographed by Thurston, Kim and Lee from SY, the exhibition presented a broader overview of his work that spans over four decades.

Just as the nurse pictures are appropriated images from pulp novel covers subverted and fetishised by Prince, much of the rest of his work involves customising found objects such as car hoods, and in one stunning case, an entire Buick adorned with objectified images of naked women. Elsewhere, there are a series of photographs of cowboys and biker chicks, and Prince isn't even beyond appropriating other peoples' jokes, with stylised paintings featuring looped one-liner gags. The result is an impressive, arresting collection worth a half-hour's browse for anyone in London with an interest in modern art.

Then headed off on the District Line to Brick Lane, where visited Rough Trade East for the first time, renewed my taste for octopus, wine and chocolate dessert at a tapas festival and wandered into 93 Feet East where there was supposed to be an all-dayer happening, but found no punters to be seen or music to be heard!

A quick change at the hotel later and then into the West End to see Female Agents, which follows in the sly, saucy footsteps of Paul Verhoeven's Black Book by looking at the derring-do of undercover female resistance agents in World War Two. In this case, Sophie Marceau's crackshot recruits/conscripts some dodgy distaff divas into the SOE's female operative branch (known as, we shit ye not, FANY) to distract the Nazis in France long enough for them to help the escape of an Allied geologist doing important groundwork paving the way for D-Day.

It's fairly derivate stuff, suffering from some erratic levels of characterisation that means you don't always care as much during episodes of jeopardy as perhaps you ought, but it says much for the zip of the production and the committed performances from the game, gallic cast that, despite some obvious flaws, the resulting film manages to be thrilling and poignant for the most part, particularly recommended for filmgoers with equal levels of passion for wartime heroics and the female form.

Turned out to be a bad time of it for Germans all round, as got back to the pub beneath the hotel in time to watch the second half of the Euro2008 final in which Spain vanquished the 1996 champions 1-0 to become worthy winners of a surprisingly entertaining competition, a particularly welcome result given that many of the bar's patrons seemed to be Spanish or Portugese speakers.

Silence Means This Much To Me

Emma Pollock/Derek Meins, The Little Civic, Wolverhampton, Wednesday November 28 2007, 8.30pm.

On arrival at the venue your chilled correspondent finds the Little Civic space has been slightly transformed since our last visit, with benches, tables and stools in what is normally a standing area. This impromptu restyling gives it the feel of something akin to a church hall, albeit with stray copies of The Fly in place of The Bible. The cosy feel continues with the unprepossessing figure of Derek Meins ambling on stage and launching into an a capella number unprompted and unannounced.

Derek, a legendary poet on his own MySpace page, accompanies himself on guitar for much of the rest of his support set which seeks to distinguish itself from the rest of the folkish singer-songwriting canon through off-kilter verbiage in the lyrics and some 'performance art' stylings that stop the audience from sitting too comfortably. This is most notable in a song called something like 'People Love Fucking' in which Derek comes over all Smeg Ryan by stopping mid-song to fake some orgasms. It's a performance sure to polarise opinions, but you can't argue he's not a bit different.

The first time your ageing altruist saw Emma Pollock was at a Delgados gig upstairs at the nearby Varsity around the time of their 'Peloton' release about ten years ago. Was one of the first gigs your socially-challenged scribe attended on his Jack Jones since college days so it sticks in the mind longer than it appears to have stayed with Emma, who says she can't remember ever playing here, and asks the audience if anybody had ever seen The Delgados play in Wolverhampton. Silence is the reply, because unlike the rather excitable young gentleman all too keen to share his Buckfast experiences with anybody who'll listen, your bashful blogger is as ever all too determined to keep a lower profile than Inch High Private Eye.

Towards the end of their reasonably successful career The Delgados had seemed to reach a stage under the influences of Dave Fridmann where their songs were being produced beyond bursting point, the subtleties and intricacies of the songwriting struggling to make themselves heard under the radio-friendly bombast. Emma's solo debut 'Watch The Fireworks' (out now on 4AD Records) sees her liberated from those constraints to deliver smashing, unpretentious pop tunes with the sharp, sweet zing of a pure citrus blast yet still infused with enough elegance and melancholy to appeal to a wide range of tastes. First single 'Adrenaline' is one of this year's genuine pop thrills, a giddy, galloping tune to rank alongside the likes of 'Manic Monday' and The Breeders' 'Cannonball', although strangely it's the follow-up 'Acid Test' which is greeted with the most recognition and enthusiasm on the night.

In the intervening ten years since our first acquaintance, your humble hack had forgotten that Emma brushes up quite the fox, wearing a colourful summer dress over thick tights. She manages the stage banter pretty well, with the combination of slight cockiness and self-deprecation we've become accustomed to seeing particularly from the Scottish indie glitterati. She even manages to get away with the faux pas of describing Canadians The New Pornographers as Americans by later making a joke of it.

Her band also cut personable figures and play with a commitment not always seen in session musicians supporting a solo act, as they run through most of the fine album, starting with 'If Silence Means That Much To You' and including strong showings from the graceful 'Limbs' and a swoonsome rendition of 'Fortune' and climaxing with the cautious hopefulness of 'The Optimist'. 'Watch The Fireworks' may have suffered from a slow start promotion-wise (Emma was touring the US with the aforementioned New Pornographers when the record was released in September) and may not have built enough momentum as yet to feature in many end-of-year best-of lists, but seeing the songs live, performed with charm and commitment, reinforces your blogger's belief it's one of this year's overlooked gems.

Finally, on leaving the venue, your hurrying hack notices that the gentleman sitting just behind him smelling of smoke is nobody other than the eccentric support act from earlier. And so, as ever, Dead Kenny was found to be living slightly beyond his Meins...

Tiswas

Various fashion, music, multimedia retail outlets, Birmingham, Saturday June 2 2007, 11am-4pm.
Lisa Milroy/Steven Shearer, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Saturday June 2 2007, 4.15pm approx.
Zodiac, Cineworld, Broad Street, Birmingham, Saturday June 2 2007, 5.15pm.
Actress and Bishop, Birmingham, Saturday June 2 2007, 9.30pm-2am.

Having stopped overnight in Brum following the Emily Haines gig and with only the vaguest plans for meeting up with people this evening, your correspondent finds himself in the unusual but not unwelcome situation of having some time to spare to mooch around the Second City at leisure. With payday just having passed, this inevitably means checking out record shops, in this case picking up the debut album by The Pigeon Detectives (as big, dumb, and fun as you'd ever want a big dumb fun record to be) and the latest by The Cribs (better than we'd ever have given them credit for being capable of achieving) and searching for that perfect pair of trainers that probably only exist inside our own twisted imaginations.

Then take a stroll alongside the canals in the glorious sunshine before popping into the always civilised prospect of the Ikon Gallery. Lisa Milroy's exhibition is pleasant enough but in your philistine hack's view her art would be better suited to posh greetings cards than prestigious galleryspace. Canadian Steven Shearer's exhibition on the top floor was more involving, kind of like Tracy Emin had she been brought up an androgynous metalhead in 70s Canada with a Lief Garret fixation. The photocollages are a bit like browsing a schizoid's scrapbook, which is probably what all modern art should be like, don't you think?

Head to the Cineworld with a bit of time to spare for a drink but find the bar upstairs closed, so have to queue up for half an hour for an ice-cream while a disorientated woman gets personal tuition from the bemused attendant on how to write a cheque before discovering she doesn't have a relevant bankcard. This for £12's worth of chocolates and fizzy drink! So end up only just getting into the auditorium on time to see David Fincher's Zodiac which follows the investigations by detectives Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards plus maverick journalist Robert Downey Jr and geeky cartoonist Jake Gylenhaal into the identity of a serial killer in the late 60s/early 70s. Fincher makes an avowed point of not exploring the motivations of these clearly obsessed individuals in favour of meticulous attention to the details of this fascinating case that was never properly resolved. His direction is less self-consciously edgy than previous efforts like Fight Club and Se7eN but this more straightforward mise-en-scene only accentuates the creepy and cold-blooded nature of the murders, making for an utterly engrossing thriller that'll keep you properly gripped throughout the epic length.

Get some food on the go before heading back to the hotel to freshen up then meet up with Ben, Jenni, Alison, Kirsten, Jim, Adam and several other fine people, for drinks outside the Actress and Bishop, during which time your swaying hack gets everybody's names mixed up (even inventing a few) and stabs a hole right through Jenni's foot with a metal chair. Then most of us head chez Kirsten for drunken karaoke, at which point Dead Kenny would like to say if you were woken up near Birmingham in the wee small hours by some berk bellowing Chesney Hawkes' 'The One And Only' and/or Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' he's really very, very sorry.

Tuesday Lunch Date

We know that the average PV reader leads a busy, thriving, fulfilling life, but on the off chance you find yourself at a bit of a loose end tomorrow (May 29th, diary maids) and fancy the idea of invading the personal space of alt.superstar Lydia Lunch, you'll get the opportunity courtesy of Only A Phone Call Away. Even better, you can do so with a clear conscience as it's all in the name of Art, being part of this year's Fierce Festival...